# Excel Question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 17, 2009, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336 "2009-07-17T14:19:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336/1 "2009-07-17T14:19:17Z")

</div>

I need to figure out how to do the follwing.

I) Figure out which field of 4 is the highest. which I know LARGE will do that but then I need to see if the other fields in aggreate are equal to or greater 20% of the highest field. As

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336/2 "2009-07-17T14:45:09Z")

</div>

I’m not sure what the rest of your question is there, but in order to identify the highest of any range of fields, you’d use the MAX() function, i.e.:

=max(a1:a4)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336/3 "2009-07-17T14:53:26Z")

</div>

Looks like he wanted to check to see if the other 3 were greater or less than 20 percent of the max cell, so you could put your max function that Duke showed you in a cell… say B1 and then take Sum(a1:a4)-B1 and then compare that to the value in B1 to see if it was greater or less than 20%.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question/503336/4 "2009-07-17T15:19:29Z")

</div>

> [@Duke](#):
>
> I’m not sure what the rest of your question is there, but in order to identify the highest of any range of fields, you’d use the MAX() function, i.e.:
> 
> =max(a1:a4)

That’s not quite what I’m looking for lets use fruit as an example

```auto

If B1 through B4 had

Apples Pears Peaches Plums

```

And Peaches had the highest number I would want it to say Peaches

> [@Spud](#):
>
> Looks like he wanted to check to see if the other 3 were greater or less than 20 percent of the max cell, so you could put your max function that Duke showed you in a cell… say B1 and then take Sum(a1:a4)-B1 and then compare that to the value in B1 to see if it was greater or less than 20%.

That should be perfect. I was trying to figure out how to do the math without knowing which cell was the largest but I can subtract it with LARGEST